Office XP problem

[dferry7]

When I open a word document from a short cut or a desktop folder, everything starts blinking and I have to hit cont,alt,del to get it working again. This only happens if I give the document a password, if fact, it happens also if I go to tools/options. I can open the document if I go to start/programs/word and browse to the file (pain in the neck). I am using winxp for an os. Is this some kind of security problem?

 

[Anne Troy]

Close Word.

Find and rename the file(s) on your hard drive called normal.dot.

Let me know if that doesnt' help.

 

[dferry7]

Thanks for your reply. I searched for normal.dot and a blank Word document came up. I don't understand what you mean.

 

[Anne Troy]

Do not open the normal.dot file, just right-click it and rename it to something like abnormal.dot and then relaunch Word and see if it has fixed the problem.

 

[dferry7]

I tried it, but it still does the same thing. On the bottom left side of the screen, it requests a virus scan. I ran the scan and found no virus.

 

[Anne Troy]

Bottom-left of what screen?

 

[dferry7]

When I open the Word file that I set a password for, the bottom left corner of the Word screen says "virus scan requested". This is not in the content area, but right below it.

 

[Anne Troy]

You've probably got visual basic code in the file. I don't know how to help you with that unless you email the file. I take it now that this means this is the only file you have a problem with--not all files as I assumed?

 

[dferry7]

This is all of the files that I set a password for. Files that I don't have to use a password for are ok.

 

[jbcalg]

were you able to find and delete the normal.dot file?

ie, with the word program closed
use windows explorer or start, find files
search for normal.dot
delete it

start word again, a new normal.dot (default document) will be created
then open one of the problem files

is the password problem still there?

 

[jbcalg]

from earlier posts it looked like the normal.dot method was tried but wanted to be sure.

are you using a virus scanner?
in windows explorer,
right click on one of the password files that gives a problem
scan with your virus scanner
any alrms go off or does it scan clean?

 

[dferry7]

I checked it with windows explorer and scanned it with Nortons Virus scan and it said it was clean.

 

[dferry7]

I tried deleting normal.dot and it didn't do any good. The program is seriously lagging and it just wants to freeze a lot. I also notice that it keeps on trying to put words in that I'm not typing. When this happens, I see that speech is checked. I uncheck it but it still becomes checked when I open another document. I'm starting to think that I should put Office 97 back and get rid of Office XP.

 

[dferry7]

Could these problems have anything to do with Microsoft's new activation thing? I never activated this program, nor was I ever prompted to, but I read somewhere that Microsoft is pushing some kind of activation thing.

 

[Anne Troy]

Hit Start-Find (or Search)-Files or Folders and type in STARTUP.

You should get several folders. Look for the one that's under folders for Microsoft Office. Double-click it and remove any items in there. You've obviously got some type of voice recognition software running, and there must be some file(s) in the Startup folder. Any *.dot files in there will load upon loading Word, no matter how many times you reinstall.